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Re-Visioning William Blake's The Four Zoas

Note: The following essays originally appeared
as an afterward and appendix in Donald Ault's Narrative Unbound:
Re-Visioning William Blake's The Four Zoas, Station Hill Press,
1987.

A Postscript on The Four Zoas as Visual Text

The relationships between The Four Zoas and the designs
on the proof sheets of Edward Young's Night Thoughts on
which Blake wrote much of the poem are often as engaging and perplexing
and the processes of the poem itself. The contrast between the piety
of Young's poem and the erotic elements in Blake's original sketches
for The Four Zoas sometimes manifests as well in the content
of his designs for Night Thoughts. The twisting, sinewy
lines subliminally (but powerfully) invoke repressed or displaced sexual
energy. Witness such particulars as the phallic shapes, accompanied
by vaginal (yet serpent like) folds, ascending the patriarchal figure's
back in the illustration on Four Zoas pages 81 and 133; or, on page 109, the precisely ambiguous placement
of the female figure's left leg, suggesting a phallus-like protrusion
from her groin; or the homo-erotically interlocked male bodies and
hidden (erotic or aggressive?) faces in the wrestling match on page
137.

More significantly, in many of the pages Blake established an antagonistic
relationship between the torsional suggestiveness of the designs and
the rigidly enclosed spaces reserved for the words of Young's or Blake's
poem. Blake usually situated these rectangular blocks in such a way
that their asymmetrical relation to the margins of the page and/or
to the figures in the designs makes the word-space stand out as a significant
visual element of the page itself. The foregrounding of the rectilinear
text-space raises a fundamental question: Could it be that in the process
of "illustrating" Young's poem, but even more decisively in experimenting
with these designs as places where his Four Zoas could
materialize, Blake was creating a scenario of possible reading, where
page layout becomes instruction rather than representation? In framing
the question this way we should avoid the temptation to allegorize
reading where certain figures (perhaps the passive ones) would represent
the the reader and others (perhaps the active ones) would represent
the agency of the text on the reader. As tempting as this strategy
of viewing the designs is – even
if the oppositions reverse (reader: active; text: passive) or destabilize
(by turns one way or the other) – such interpretation too easily
becomes mastery of Blake's disruptive visual field. Instead, we might
consider how empty text-spaces and surrounding designs enact within
the viewer the same transformative impulses and resistances that exist
in the verbal text itself.

In most of the illustrations included in Narrative Unbound,
for example, the positions of the figures in relation to the de-centered
rectilinear word-spaces invoke a precise anxiety in the spectator:
the text-blocks cut into the image portion of the design in such a
way that it seems as if events are going on behind the verbal text,
as if decisive information is being (perhaps perversely) hidden. In
varying degrees, this intrusive visual word-space interferes with the
representational lure of the "seen"
part of the design, activating in the viewer a desire to imagine the
drawing as somehow "complete" behind the words.

In the images that open and close Narrative Unbound it
is difficult to imagine exactly how the drawing might be completed
behind the text. In the former illustration (pages 81 and 133 of The
Four Zoas), it almost seems as if completing the drawing would
unnaturally elongate (or even disconnect) the right arm that we assume
is extending from the body wielding the spear; and the torsional position
of the hand above the curve suggests that the disk-like shape may be
rising, resisting the hand atop it, perhaps as if this curved form
were a (prodigiously phallic?) part of his own body?
In the closing illustration (page 83 of The Four Zoas),
the dark figure's face and body are so thoroughly "hidden" by the word-space
that its rectangular shape seems to be the figure's body;
otherwise, it is a figure whose face and body have been radically cut
away, leaving feet too small to support either the fantasized "body
behind the text" or the literal textual body itself, unsettling this
massive, spooky figure.

The designs used to open regions A, B, and C above similarly arouse
the anxiety that accompanies viewing such cut-away body images. Imagining
the drawings complete behind the text by connecting the lines that
have been cut off by the sharp borders of the word-spaces requires
a surrealistic bodily dis-memberment and re-memberment. In ruthlessly
cutting off the drive toward closure and completeness that informs
the ordinary, ego-affirming visual imagination, this incisive, dis-membering tabula
rasa literally opens up a space to be filled in by language. By
denying access to the (imaginary) unified visual body of another, this
interposition of the (symbolic) cutting edge that opens up a space
for words threatens the unity of the viewer's own ego-body – an
enactment of the textual castration explored by Jacques Lacan and others.
But Blake undoes this primary cut by making the visible words of his
text resist absorption into phallocentric grammar.

The spectator's desire to complete the drawing behind the text in
these examples parallels the reader's urge to find an ur-narrative
behind the poem. On the physical page, of course, there is literally
nothing behind the verbal text, for the rectangular space and the inscribed
words constitute their own complete visual field. Likewise there is
literally no primordial story behind the surface details of the poem's
narrative. The presumption of such a story dissolves under close scrutiny
of particulars.

At the one point in the manuscript where Blake sketched in the completion
of a Night Thoughts design, the sketch disrupts the lines
of poetry. Thus on page 137 of The Four Zoas, where Blake
curved the left margin of the verbal text around the sketched-in completed
wrestling figures, the lines of poetry are compressed (show ideological
and aesthetic stress) precisely where the poem's syntax unequivocally
asserts Los's identity with Urthona. Central to the argument of Narrative Unbound is
the possibility that this syntactic reduction of Los to Urthona threatens
the revisionary ontology of the poem. Thus, the two figures wrestling
do not simply allegorize the reader's resistive struggle with this
apocalyptic text (though this is certainly a dimension of the design's
subversive referentiality) but also the struggle between Los and Urthona
for ontological priority over one another at the close of the poem – figures
frozen in a twisting identity-in-difference. Significantly, this point
of stress is the only instance in The Four Zoas manuscript
where Blake displaces the verbal text in favor of an intruding "completed" drawing,
as if such completion itself ontologically displaces the status of the
literal words on the page.

On page 126, the verso side of one of the Night Thoughts designs,
Blake invokes an opposite strategy. Instead of hiding the figure behind
the text, he draws a weird creature whose eyes peer out through the
word "reorganize," a visual pun requiring an act of double reading
that can literally "re-organ-eyes."

Since in many of Blake's finished "illuminated" works there is little
direct correspondence in content between design and accompanying
verbal text, it is hardly surprising that drawings made to illustrate
another poem, serving later as worksheets, should bear approximate
and, at best, problematic relation to the content of the inscribed
text. Yet, remarkably, the examples incorporated in Narrative
Unbound selected primarily on the basis of their structural
or thematic relevance to the argument of the sections of this book
also seem to suggest complex interconnectedness either as a matter
of coincidence or a sign of fundamental interrelatedness, open to ongoing
definition.

Blake's words on the opening and closing illustrations for Narrative
Unbound, for example, strain toward articulating the context
and content of a primal, sexual "fall:" the verbal text of Four
Zoas page 133 gives a radically altered perspective on the events described
on page 83, while page 81 verbally expresses information forgotten
by both of these accounts.
Yet the visual images in no direct way
"illustrate" central features of the "event" of this "fall."
Perversely, however, the image of the upright patriarch standing on
two human necks comments on a peripheral detail in line 133:23 ("We
fall on one anothers necks more closely we embrace"), which describes
the ostensibly cooperating, communal male "Brotherhood" that stands
almost homo-erotically over/against the separate female.

Another kind of structural relation holds between the verbal/visual
details of the pages used to open Regions A and B, in that words of
one seem to "refer" to the visual design of the other and vice versa.
That is, the rider averting his/her eyes behind a flaming-mouthed four-headed
horse (thus doubly "behind the text") on Four Zoas page
75 visually glosses Urizen's self-pitying apology for relinquishing
the "steeds of Light" on page 65. Conversely, the bizarre figure jutting
his head out from behind the text in the visual design on page 65 visualizes
the context of Urizen's apology (on page 64): "O Fool to
think that I could hide from his all piercing eyes" (64:17), which
in turn redounds back onto the image on page 75, initiating a kind of hall of mirrors
effect between the two pages.

Yet another relationship exists between the illustrations that open
Regions B and C. In both designs circular forms surround images of
a horse and rider whose bodies are significantly obscured by the word-space.
Unlike the previous examples, however, the design on pages 239-40 (page
47 of The Four Zoas) seem to illustrate the text on that
page of Blake's poem unusually well:
"Tharmas rode on the dark abyss...Los & Enitharmon Emerge/In strength
and brightness...Red as the Sun in hot morning of the bloody day"
(47:1-5), though the elements of the illustration are displaced from
their arrangement in the verbal text. The similarity of the designs
on pages 75 and 47 of The Four Zoas connects narrative
moments that otherwise seem distinct. On page 75, the focus is Tharmas'
relation to a male power struggle between Urizen and the Spectre of
Urthona, while on page 47 Tharmas' relation to the sexual politics
of Los, Enitharmon, and the vanished Enion is in the foreground. The
text on each of these pages symmetrically explores Tharmas' relations
to characters excluded from the other page.

By contrast, the illustrations on the title page and at the beginning
of the General Preludium of Narrative Unbound show Blake's willingness to minimize the intrusion
of the verbal text into the visual design (though in both cases there is a cutting of the sharp-edged verbal space toward the groin area of the central character on page on Figure 10. and the small figure on the upper right hand corner or the text boundary in Figure 11). Instead of withholding visual
information to create the fiction that the figures in the designs are
acting behind the word-space, Blake employs two very different sets
of representational conventions to create opposite structural relations
between the designs and the visible words. On page 109 of the
Four Zoas Blake creates the impression that the figure is trying
to free herself from the verbal text by bursting out into the space
occupied by the viewer. Yet the way her arms point so decisively upward,
conforming to the vertical edges that enclose them, reaffirms this
figure's imprisonment within the two-dimensional space of the page.
The relatively complete
exposure of this figure, in conjunction with her struggle to break
free from the text, structurally parallels both the verbal clarity
of the lamentations of Ahania and Enion on this page and their contrapuntal
content – hope and despair. In addition, however, these speeches
of Ahania and Enion betray a passivity in their roles as female reflectors
rather than aggressive actors, while the figure in the design more
closely resembles a female appropriation of flaming male revolutionary
energy akin to that of the early Orc.

Although virtually nothing seems to be "hidden" by the word-space of the illustration at the opening of the General Preludium of Narrative Unbound, Blake
invokes the conventions of non-perspectival flatness to preclude the
possibility of the figures escaping from the surface of the page. Page
107, unlike 109, thus celebrates containment on the page and invites
us to read the miniaturized figures in some kind of a sequence – not
necessarily clockwise, though that makes one kind of narrative sense
(Young's text, which is supposedly "illustrated" here, does not present
these dream fantasies in this order in his poem). The image on this page is, however, juxtaposed with verbal text that focuses on Urizen's fall into a raging dragon form
following his sexual confrontation with the Shadowy Female, which issues
in a threat that the entire narrative will recycle itself. The relatively
pleasant images in the design of a dream on this page parody Urizen's
grotesque descent into his worst nightmare, and the orderly (albeit
potentially disturbing) circular placement of the figures parodies
the threat of The Four Zoas narrative dismally recycling
itself.

On the Embedding of Night VIIb in Night VIIa

In the otherwise generally admirable 1982 Erdman edition of Blake's
poetry and prose, one glaring and uncharacteristically speculative
decision (which reflects several smaller ones, especially in Night
I) directly addresses the issues of Narrative Unbound.
I refer to Erdman's decision, suggested by Mark Lefebvre, to embed
the rearranged version of Night VIIb in the middle of Night VIIa. Erdman
gave serious consideration to at least three different proposals for
conflating the two Nights – including Andrew Lincoln's hypothesis
of embedding VIIa in the middle of rearranged VIIb, and John Kilgore's
recommendation that VIIb (in its original order) be embedded in VIIa
(E 386). Erdman's willingness to entertain these possibilities (with
little encouragement from Blake) reflects his deep concern for what
he repeatedly calls "fit" between the two Nights – an odd concern,
it might seem, in a poet who refused to accept even the "fit" between
world and mind: "You shall not bring me down to believe in such fitting
and fitted I know better" (Annotations to Wordsworth, E 667).

Erdman's concern is real and justifiable, however. The existence
of two Night VIIs poses a serious challenge to the principle of the
primacy of narrative sequential order: if the two Nights are separate,
to be read sequentially, then the order in which they are read is a
fundamental aspect of the being of their respective narratives; if
they are to be somehow combined, how does this new sequencing affect
the temporal narrative order, as well as the underlying textual patterns?
Given the intense tendency of the narrative toward temporality and
the woven textual patterns toward spatiality, it seems unavoidable
that, although embedding VIIb in VIIa must radically alter both the
narrative and textual fields, the impact of that embedding should be
most directly and dramatically evident in the transformation of the
spatial/textual structure of VIIb when it enters the field of VIIa.

Considered as independent structural patterns, as we have seen in
Region C, the two Night VIIs constitute a narrative branching by means
of which radically alternate paths or world-lines both converge and
diverge, make possible and undermine, issue in and cancel out, a finite
set of narrative happenings. That is, these two Nights are not different
versions of how the same events occur but are different ways they actually do occur – a
branching of the narrative that allows Blake to explore the implications
of alternative fictional possibilities, each Night repressing key aspects
emphasized by the other Night VII while directly intersecting other
crucial points. Mapped independently of each other's controlling structural
patterns, Nights VIIa and VIIb each reveal strongly defined but orthogonally
opposed spatial properties. Night VIIa is dominated by the controlling
image of the Tree of Mystery: Blake carefully coordinates every key
event spatially in reference to it. The events of VIIa are organized
tightly within three horizontal tiers, marked off along a vertical
axis, and defined by the spaces above, outside, and beneath the Tree.
Figure 12 schematizes Night VIIA.

In Night VIIb, however, the Tree of Mystery is virtually absent except
for two quite important direct references. It is as if in Night VIIb
the Tree had absorbed the characters and mystified the narrator so
completely that they are almost unaware of its presence and power.
In the absence of the presiding image of the Tree – indeed of
any single controlling spatial image – Night VIIb is organized,
in direct opposition to VIIA, through a series of discontinuous (though
implicitly overlapping) parallel segments, deployed along the horizontal
axis as parallel, vertical, self contained fragments whose details
nevertheless feed from one section to the next by means of shifting
gaze and speech direction of the characters. Night VIIb is schematized
in Figure 13.

When this sequence of discrete vertical segments of Night VIIb is
embedded – as Erdman has done – in VIIa, which is dominated
by its horizontal tiers, Night VIIb's segments become subject to the
structural laws of VIIa, and the events and characters that before
functioned independently must now be plotted in relation to VIIa's
grid. Events involving Los, for instance, must now be plotted to intersect
the upper world (above the Tree) where Los functions in VIIa; Orc before
the Shadow in VIIb must be mapped into the space beneath the Tree (in
accordance with VIIa); Orc's becoming a serpent must be projected into
the middle tier (outside the Tree); and so on. What emerges from this
mapping of events of VIIb in terms of the VIIa grid is a curved graph
in which the discontinuous segments of VIIb are transformed into a
continuous serpentine movement, partially latent in the continuous
re-orientation of perspective that pervades the discontinuous structure
of VIIb considered as an independent Night. Mapped according to these
principles, the composite structure of Night VIIb embedded in VIIa
takes the form of Figure 14.

Visualized in this way, the embedded textual pattern of VIIb itself
becomes the serpentine form wrapped around the (almost invisible) Tree
of Mystery. This radical transformation of VIIb when it is embedded
in VIIa is a dramatic and surprising example of the ontological principles
presented in Narrative Unbound and thus carries with it
a transformation of the narrative far too complex to assess here.

It is perhaps significant that, while the embedding of VIIb in VIIa
in the above fashion yields interesting structural results by revealing
how VIIa accomodates VIIb, attempting to embed the spatially rigid
pattern of VIIa in VIIb radically disrupts the chain of shifting gaze
and speech acts (Urizen to Los to Tharmas to Enitharmon to Orc to Shadowy
Female to Tharmas to Urizen's spatial worlds to the dead bursting forth)
that served as the ground for simultaneously dividing VIIb into parallel
segments and connecting these segments in an unalterable order. The
disruption of the textual pattern of VIIb that the insertion of VIIa
immediately produces could well serve to emphasize the incompatibility
of the textual programs of VIIa and VIIb and thereby to argue that
they be kept as separate and distinct Nights. This disruption could
also be an indication that a new rule of organization of VIIb would
have to be discovered that could accomodate VIIa, a rule that would
probably redefine the structural pattern of both Nights. For the time
being, however, it seems fair to say that if one is determined to force
VIIa and VII b into one textual unit, the way Erdman has done it is
not only probably the best but inadvertently produces interesting structural
by-products. Nevertheless, it seems completely unwarranted to persue
the seamless fitting together of the elements of a text as radical
as Blake's Four Zoas.

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